BIG ISSUE - FULL INTERVIEW

[Anthony O'Connor]

Here's the full interview

Its not on sale in mancheter anymore so i figured no homeless ppl are losing
out if i post it now

Ian Brown bounds into the room, blue-tinted aviator glasses over a
monster,monkey grin. Within seconds he'll be standing arms aloft talking
about his penis (we'll come back to this). This is the moody Manc whose
mouth is not only incapable of singing in tune, say his detractors, but
spouts dodgy homophobic views and threatens air stewardesses. It was that
which got him a life-changing two-month stretch in Strangeways.
The first and last time I interviewed Ian Brown, ex-Stone Rose, in a Mexican
cafe in Manchester in the last summer of the 1980s, he was a man on the edge
of greatness. An unknown outside his own town, he had yet to become the
leader of one of the most influential bands of the next decade. It's odd
then, in 2000, to meet again, to be looking back. But Brown, 36, is not
looking back. From the moment he walked out of jail -and he awkled and
walked until his feet hurt from the sudden exercise- he's been a man fully
content with life, back from the lowest point. He's happy, easy, lasughing.
Don't believe the publicly moody mask-this guy is positively gay.
There's a critically-acclaimed second solo LP, Golden Greats, he married his
mexican girlfriend Fabiola in December (she's due to give birth to his third
child in March), he's just played to 20,000 people at a free festival in his
home town on Millenium Eve, and is now about to embark on a world tour. It
makes the Roses anthem I Am The Ressurection seem absurdly prophetic.
Brown- written off, forgotten, even ostracised- is standing tall while his
peers are in the wilderness.
It's a point that makes itself, as Brown and the photographer Kevin
Cummins - who go back 15 years - trde catch-up stroies. The Happy Mondays
are running true to form. Bez is recovering from a big motorbike smash,
Shaun has 'lost it' again. His former manager Gareth Evans is "still a
twat", then there's lots of libellous stuff about A-list Manc footballers.
But with Brown, there's not a hint of schadenfreude, it's just what's going
on.
But back to Brown's penis. "So I get to the jail and they all know I'm
coning 'coz they've heard it on the radio. I get taken down to my cell and
i know they're all craning for a look. Suddenly the cell door opens and I'm
like, having a piss. And i can hear this lad shouting 'I've seen his
penis!'. Being known and to be in a jail house, it's like a zoo.
"Kevin Rowland [of Dexy's Midnight Runners] sent me a nice letter saying
he'd been in jail and had found it hard to cope. He'd been through it was
pffering a shoulder of support," say Brown. "I was made up to recieve it,
I love that group Dexy's, I'd never met him before and i thought it was a
really nice thing to do."
A Short Tour Of Northern Jails - he was also briefly in HMP Risley and HMP
Kirkham - is to be Brown's next release, a mini-autobiography of life
inside. He's indignant at the injustice of the scentence and that he was
made a category A prisoner (locked up with lifers despite his crime only
being a verbal attack) and says he was a fall guy in the summer of air rage.
He was charged with aggressive and abusive behavior on a flight from Paris
to Manchester. When the Strangeways riots kicked off almost a decade ago,
Brown had the world at his feet. The contrast cut deep.
"One kid had six casettes and fove of them were Stone Roses. I had to ban
him. No way could I hear the Roses in there!"
"All I got was love off the inmates. And hate, that was all I got from the
screws. I had seven strip searches in 21 days. They were on my case all
the time. When they came to give the mail out they's say my name - "Brown,
Brown, Brown, Brown, Brown," just to piss the lads off. But I didn't get
any grief off them, I got looked after beautiful. They'd lend me a CD
player for the night, give me a newspaper. Give me an orange or a bag of
sugar."
"I went in jail with absolutely no respect for autorities and came out with
even less. The state of prisons is a joke really. Ninety per cent of
inmates are on heroin. I saw more heroin and rocks [crack cocaine] in there
than I've seen in the music business in the last 10 years. Every day kids
came offering rocks, and I'd be like, 'Get them out of my cell'. I had five
different pad mates and evey one was a smackhead," he says.
Released just over a year ago, the jail experience inspired three tracks on
the new album directly - Free My Way, So Many Soldiers and Set My Baby Free.
With prison, and with his own public vilifcation, Ian Brown's motto appears
to be "Judge and be judged". He's even revised his view on the demise of
the Roses. Whereas once the blame lay squarely on the shoulders of one-time
best friend and guitarist John Squire who walked out - they havent spoken in
four years - Brown has now reached an equilibrium. "I'd lay the blame
equally on all four of us," he says. "Whatever one guy is doing, another
guy can always say 'No, stop it.' but we didn't."
The sentiment behind that motto is reaffirmed on his new single released
this week, Dolphins Were Monkeys.
No one can judge you baby
That don't live your life
It's also repeated on the album's finale, Babasonicas, the lyric draped over
a mariachi-style guitar lick:
You weren't there that night
You didn't get it right
You weren't there that day
You will never know
At the sell-out Brixton Academy gig, there was a cultish air. There are
plenty of fans out there who will stick with him, even if the world won't.
I suggest he's become like a Morrissey - a reclusive star with diehard loyal
fans. Brown agrees. "I watched a few Morrissey videos recently. He was a
supreme idol, he was never touched. He's funny, intelligent.He was rated,
wannee? Then he said something and now he's super-marginalised, a pariah."
"I can see that. Like they said I was homophobic last year. I'd never put
gay people down. With the Roses our first cover was Gay News. We marched
and played benefits to fight against Clause 28. There's nothing I can do,
it's a small island. i might be finished in England with all the bullshit."
Dividing his time between New York and Manchester he's only a Green Card
away from a full-time life in the States. The US tour starts in May. Maybe
he wants to shield his younger kids, seven-year-old Frankie, and Casey,
four. Frankie discovered his father was in the "p-place" [prison] in the
school playground.
"I love being me. I see myslef as a father before anything else," says
Brown. "I'd love seven, ten. I'd love to be loaded and go and adopt some
street kids. Love to. I'll take as many as I'm blessed with."
He's learning Spanish and harbours the ambition of being the first UK artist
to sing Spanish in Hispanic countries. But it's also a family matter:
"There is no way I'm going to have a baby in March with a Mexican girl and
then in a year's time they'll be laughing at me and I won't know why."
Aside from the tour, he'll be working with James Lavelle on the next UNKLE
album, with Maxim from the Prodigy and techno legends 808 State. Would he
ever give up music for his kids?
"I wanna amuse myself, that's the first thing. If i didn't feel I had
anything to contribute then I'd stop. But while I've still got lyrics going
on in my head and tunes and certain beats I wanna do, I'll keep at it," he
says. "When the well is dry I'll give up, but I'm still overflowing."
At the end of our chat I pull out my old 12" of the Stone Roses Made Of
Stone. Brown turns it over in his hands like a relic, a curiosity from an
ancient past.
"I feel great that we did it," he says of the Roses. "I know we had the
whole world at our feet and we George Best'ed it. We George Best'ed it for
deffo. But the Roses was a 20th century thing," he says. "We've all
learned a lot in these last ten years." It's been a decade - it may as well
have been a thousand years.

That's all folks

TTFN

ANT